The CatholicVote.org Video Sends the Wrong Pro-life Message

Tools like this are a powerful way to put our pro-life arguments into narrative form. Unfortunately, I think this video inadvertently gives the wrong pro-life message. Watch it and then ask the following question: "According to this video, what is the grounds for human value?" The video mistakenly communicates that human life is valuable merely in virtue of its instrumental value.

But what if President Obama never reached the presidency? Indeed, what if his life was filled with hardships that he had trouble overcoming? What if he never went to college? What if he never found success in politics? What if he struggled with homelessness? Etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. Would he not still be a valuable human being, with the fundamental right to life and worthy of protection? Yes, because the pro-life argument is that human beings have intrinsic value.

You see, it's not the potential in a human being that makes him valuable. He's valuable in virtue of the kind of thing he is. Human beings are valuable precisely because they are humans beings, created in God's image.